Tory Burch Autumn Winter 23 Collection in New York #NYFW
Photos by Sonny Vandevelde
On one level, the word “culmination” seems unsuited to discussion of a fashion collection. Fashion is an ongoing process, and designers aspire to forward motion season after season, so how can one season be the culmination of those efforts? Is that even desirable?
Probably not. No one wants to reach a particular height – even sky high – and plateau. Still, the beautiful collection Tory Burch showed for fall can be seen as a culmination, not of her creative trajectory, which is forever ongoing, but of a very specific goal on which the company has focused for some time: brand elevation. Burch’s husband Pierre-Yves Roussel joined the company as CEO in 2018, allowing Burch to deliberately step back from running the business to focus on design. This collection showed the savvy behind that decision, and with future hindsight, might be viewed as a watershed moment in that elevation process.
Burch wrote in her program notes that she wanted “to challenge perceptions of beauty and femininity,” and to “break down the traditional wardrobe and rebuild it with an undone attitude.” The operative word here is “traditional.” A city stroll today reveals a whole lot of undone already walking around out there, much of it rooted in the yoga-pants-as-uniform camp. Burch’s vision had nothing to do with that kind of casual. Rather, she skipped back to a time when people got dressed for day, not in the ladies-who-lunch manner, but in the manner of taking liberties with traditional sportswear. In that respect, she paid homage to Calvin Klein, not via specific references, but in the draping of a cool sensibility over a polished core. (And in the calm side of her palette – the camels, taupes and grays. The apple green satin – not so much.)
Burch started with separates – jackets, skirts and pants that can’t double as workout wear – and then tinkered deftly to emphasize what she called “the beauty of imperfection,” closing a wrap skirt slightly askew with a safety pin, or designing the heel of a shoe to look cracked. She approached the collection as a wealth of wardrobe pieces, to be combined as a woman chooses, sometimes with tone-on-tone subtlety (the sweater-and-skirt looks that opened the show, one taupe, one black), and sometimes with more flamboyance (the red georgette shirt with unfastened cuffs flapping over brown satin pants).
The range of shapes was considerable. Jackets came both roomy and fitted, roomy, some fitted, and the coat lineup, terrific, form a short white leather with a shearling collar to an elegant notched-collar wool tweed. For evening, Burch offered polor opposite options: alluring unconstructed dresses with webs of beading beneath lowcut backs, and shapely looks with exposed-lingerie constructions. Either way, they were a little undone and a lot elevated.